


A Bird in the Hand

by reserve



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Mentor/Protégé, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 21:26:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12176862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/pseuds/reserve
Summary: He doesn’t want Daniel to know his tells.





	A Bird in the Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brofisting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brofisting/gifts), [EralkFang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EralkFang/gifts).



> Thanks for showing me an alternate route, [Aimee.](http://brofisting.tumblr.com) Spoilers for _Now You See Me 2_ , but honestly if you just like the idea of a smug, know-it-all getting his ass eaten then you'll do fine here.

It’s not like he sleeps at Dylan’s _every_ night. That would be—weird, and also, he doesn’t, so Merritt’s continued suggestion that he keeps “sneaking off” is unfounded.

“That’s entirely unfounded,” Dylan says, over dumplings and orange chicken, when he relays Merritt’s accusation.

“I know!” Daniel picks up a dumpling so forcefully that his chopsticks crush it and the filling nearly falls out before he can get it to his mouth. “That’s what I said.”

“You said ‘unfounded?’”

“No, I said ‘fuck off,’ but yeah.”

Dylan snorts and half-smiles at him before tipping back his beer by its long-necked bottle. It’s the smile that reminds Daniel why he’s been, _well_ , sneaking off all the time.

The smile, and the magic lessons.

Okay _, magic lessons_ is just the easiest way to put it. He’s not exactly in need of _lessons,_ as it were, and if Dylan were to ever call their little chats “lessons” then Daniel would probably tell him to fuck off too. But while Merritt and Jack are skill-sharing (and also making a fucking mess of the shithole apartment they’re sharing in a nightmarish parody of a college dorm), so are he and Dylan. Skill-sharing, that is.

Mostly Dylan is trying to trip him up and Daniel is evading him at every turn. It is both fun and frustrating, and when he manages to outplan and outplay Dylan, when he manages to stay three steps ahead, while shifting four back and two forward, they have Chinese food afterward and Dylan smiles at him. Like that, just like _that_.

“What does Jack say?”

Daniel shrugs. “Nothing.”

“Well, at least you know you’re always the smartest guy in that room. Must be nice, right?”

“Some consolation prize.” Daniel rolls his eyes. “You should see the bathroom.”

“Is that why you’re here all the time?” One more smile, like letting a bird loose in his chest.

“I’m here.” Dumpling jab. Feet up on the other kitchen chair, which Dylan _hates_. “Because it’s my pleasure to watch you.” Chopsticks pointed. “Try and make me think.” Big grin. “That I’m not.”

Dylan leans in; beer still in hand. “Not what?”

“The smartest guy in the room.”

For a very thick moment, which Daniel feels settle over them like a humid night, it seems like Dylan is about to do or _say_ something regrettable for this soon after the Chinese food. But it’s not like they haven’t sat tensely across from one another before—he thinks about that first meeting in the interrogation room with the frequency of a favorite jerk-off fantasy, not that he actually—that’s a lie, he emphatically _does_ —but it’s still memorable after nights like this one, in thick moments like this. Point is: they’re not exactly strangers to rising stakes with nothing between them but a table and ego.

That’s the other part of the lessons: ego management (Dylan’s language, not his). Daniel would probably go with “expectation management” but this isn’t his magic show.

“Here’s a fun exercise,” Dylan says.

And Daniel watches him physically lower the ante, lean back and away, take another sip of beer. Disappear the metaphorical cards clean off the table. He grunts instead of giving in and asking _what_ , maybe because he knows just how petulant he’ll sound.

“Your employer wants to go to the moon—“

Nope, now it’s his turn to snort.

“No, listen. Money's no object. Your employer wants to go to the moon and it’s your job to get him there. Outline the steps you take.”

“Dylan—“

“Take this seriously, c’mon. Otherwise I’m sending you home to your bunk beds.”

“I have the single bed, Dylan, and I’m not going to take this seriously because it’s stupid and also I ran all over the five boroughs today feeding pigeons. So, no.”

“The pigeons are integral.”

“Yeah, to your _ruse_.” Daniel remembers that he has his own beer, which is great; he takes a sip to cover his smirk.

“ _Our_ ruse,” Dylan chides him, but he’s smiling again. “Fine, no trip to the moon. You did good today. The birds like you. I didn’t expect that.”

“Things like me.”

Dylan pushes away from the table and stands up, takes his beer with him and, as he’s walking away he says over his shoulder, “I take it you’ll be staying the night?”

“You like me,” Daniel amends, following.

“No, but you’ve been pretty pathetic since Henley left and you had to move in with Frick and Frack, so I figure, can’t hurt to throw the kid a bone every now and again, let him stick around, teach him what I can. I know it how lonely—”

He’s real close when Dylan turns, still pontificating. That’s, uh, kind of part of their lessons too: sneaking up, which Dylan is great at, and which Daniel is—working on. Dylan moves in light and shadow, always two people at once. Daniel has always been a showman, an awkward one, but that falls away onstage anyway, so it’s not like—

“Dylan,” he says. “Thanks.” And holy hell, does it feel good to catch the talented Agent Rhodes off his guard, especially after following his fucking breadcrumbs all day to literally feed the birds.

“So, I’ll set up the couch for you.”

He watches Dylan try to back down again, like that could possibly be an option when all Daniel’s truly good at is pushing the envelope. He puts both hands on Dylan’s shoulders to push it further. He can never keep his hands to himself; never could. “You don’t need to do that. I don’t know why you bother every time.”

Dylan keeps trying to get it through his head that situations don’t always go to plan, that his machinations will not always come through, and that he cannot control people—but while Dylan has been oh-so-diligently training him, it has become entirely apparent just how easy it is for _him_ to control _Dylan_.

“I don’t remember the last time I slept on the couch,” he adds, considering, thoughtful. “Must’ve been, wow, June?”

“Danny, we don’t—“

“Talk about it. I’m aware. But at least this way I’m saving you a trip to the linen closet.”

Just like the first time, he kisses Dylan. Plucks the beer from his limp right hand and sets it down on the coffee table. Narrowly avoids a big, shiny book with Houdini on its cover. Dylan’s hands go to his hair as if on instinct and he groans against Daniel’s mouth.

“I miss your hair,” he says—no, _moans_.

“You’re the one who made me cut it.”

“I need you to be invisible,” Dylan says, digging in a little with his blunt fingernails, sending electric shivers down Daniel’s spine. “Not look like you’re in a boy band.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re an asshole?” He wonders, pausing between _you_ and _you’re_ to bite at Dylan’s mouth and kiss him deeper.

“You. A lot of bad men I’ve put behind bars.”

“Blah, blah. You should fuck me. Asshole.”

Dylan punches out a laugh and, like the first time, Dylan walks him backwards through the hardly useful French doors between his bedroom and the living room until Daniel’s calves hit the bed. Dylan pushes him onto back and crawls over him, kissing him, holding his wrists above his head with one hand before sliding back down the mattress to tug his jeans off, then his boxers. He mouths at the tender insides of both of Daniel’s knees, then up high on one thigh. Takes hold of his hips with two strong, calloused hands—Daniel can fucking _feel_ the rough patches left behind by Dylan’s glock and it makes his dick leak—and drags him down the bed and closer. Gets one leg over his shoulder and hunkers down like a dog over a bowl. He blows on Daniel’s asshole and Daniel makes the kind of high-pitched, shameless sound he can’t seem to keep at bay during these encounters.

Amused from his hairline to his mouth, Dylan makes eye contact with him from behind his erection. “Have you considered that Merritt knows _exactly_ how often you come here, and why?”

“His shit doesn’t work on me. C’mon, touch me.” Dylan nips at him, at the bottom of his ass, and he yelps. “ _Fuck_ , not like that.”

He can feel Dylan’s smile before he licks on command, apologetic, and tongues at the edge of him. “Like this?” It comes out muffled.

He means to say, _yes, dear god, yes_ , but it’s all garbled.

“ _Is_ this why you come here?” Dylan gets both hands on his asscheeks and spreads him apart. It feels like too much already, too much of a stretch to be pulled open and exposed, to lose control of himself so quickly.

Daniel moans out a denial.

“I think you do. I think you come here because you need someone to shut you up and—“ Dylan’s tongue becomes a pointed, wet menace against his asshole, pushing into him, fucking him. Then he stops again, like a _fucking_ asshole, and says, “I think you come to me, because you know I can do just that.”

“Jesus, you’re killing me here.” He nudges Dylan’s back with his heel in protest.

Somehow that move lands him on his stomach, breathless, ass high in the air while Dylan chuckles behind him. FBI agent combat training, magician’s son, magician—Daniel didn’t stand a chance against that feat. He can feel Dylan stripping off his sweater and shirt, then he lifts Daniel’s hips up higher, digs his thumbs into the meaty part of Daniel’s ass, and gets back to making him pant, hard, into the pillow. He grips at the sheets while Dylan settles into driving him insane. He’s persistent, the most patient person Daniel has ever met, and there’s saliva dripping down Daniel’s balls from the attention Dylan is paying him right now, full-on holding him open with one slick thumb so he can shove his tongue in deeper, get him wetter.

“You taste—amazing, after you’ve been working,” Dylan told him, maybe the third time he did this, when Daniel had caught on that eating ass was a _thing_  Dylan clearly had. “And you fall apart beautifully.”

The idea of falling apart at all annoyed Daniel, but Dylan was bright eyed, his lips looked swollen from relentlessly slurping at him, and there was a dark patch on his trousers that revealed just how much Dylan enjoyed making him lose control with his tongue and two fingers. It almost made him hard again. And then they were both hard again, and he got to lord it over Dylan while slowly riding him, hands in his stupid hair, showing off.

He does like showing off.

“Danny, touch yourself. Make yourself come for me, kid,” Dylan says, pausing to breathe, pushing fingers into him instead. _Kid_ used to bother him too, before he decided it was just on the right side of kinky.

Daniel listens to him. He takes himself in hand and strokes off in time to Dylan’s pace. Shudders when he hears and then feels Dylan spit onto his asshole and push it into him. He feels _sloppy,_ that’s what Dylan does to him. Like he needs to be made a mess in counterpoint to his success of the day. Like Dylan needs to show him just how easy it can be to come undone even after you’ve celebrated your win, your triumph.

“Are you gonna—“ He grits his teeth against the steady onslaught on his prostate. “Fuck me? Or is this the whole show?”

“Come for me and you’ll find out.”

Daniel bites down on his forearm, the one not currently moving between his trembling thighs, and then Dylan, Christ, has his tongue between his fingers, and they’re stretching him, tugging him open, and he’s ready—Christ he’s so fucking ready—that when Dylan makes a satisfied, truly blissful mmmmph sound against his skin, that’s what really pushes him directly over the edge. The very idea of being just so fucking delicious to someone. That’s really all any of them want: to be the main attraction.

Dylan is still playing with him when he collapses onto his chest, legs splayed apart, heedless of his own come and Dylan’s bedspread. He could fucking swear he hears Dylan licking his lips.

“For someone so uptight you sure eat ass like a champ,” he mutters.

“For a control freak—“

“Save it, I know.”

Dylan’s touches turn soothing. Palm on his lower back, warm circles. Dylan has never asked about his family beyond what he already knows from his meticulous research. But that’s not really personal-personal information. Daniel finds he doesn’t really mind.

“We should order more food,” he says. “Maybe club sandwiches.”

“Let me come on your back first.”

Daniel hums, thoughtful. “My face. I never get to watch you.”

He turns over before Dylan can protest. Dylan, he’s learned, hates to be watched, scrutinized. He doesn’t want Daniel to know his tells; what his face does right before he loses it. He hates to show his hand. He helpfully undoes Dylan’s trousers for him and settles back with his arms crossed behind his head. He’s got spunk crusted across his stomach, but that doesn’t matter much once Dylan kneels over him, and starts to touch himself.

He’s watching Dylan tilt his head back, pinch at one of his dusky nipples while his hand works, maybe putting on a bit of a show, when suddenly he can picture them on stage together. What it might be like for Dylan to come out of the shadows and stand beside him: equals, not apprentice and master, but maybe master and successor. It’s a nice thought.

Dylan moans, and Daniel thinks about one day introducing him to an audience.

He thinks he’d like that.

**Author's Note:**

> You can follow me on [tumblr](http://reserve.tumblr.com), but it's more Thomas Middleditch than Jesse Eisenberg, if you catch my meaning.


End file.
